Miracle
by Crimson-Eyed-Angel99
Summary: Armin has taken many ideas from books of the world and strategy. But for this one to work, it would take a miracle. Set in Titan-verse.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I dun own Shingeki No Kyojin. Don't want to have that level of responsibility on my shoulders, thank you. And there's a crossover that I also don't own but let's keep that a secret for now (the crossover, not the fact that I don't own it) (obviously) (wait, what?).

There **_should_** not be manga spoilers. I do read the manga, but I don't think I'm dealing with any current events in the manga.

_heichou_ = corporal. Or lance corporal. Military distinctions are fun and utterly obscure to me.

#

"Eren."

Eren looked up from making a final check of his 3D maneuver gear before the scouts moved out for the day. Immediately, he was on his feet, standing at attention for his superior.

"Levi-_heichou_."

The corporal had been leading them for the past four days, following their separation from Erwin's larger group. It was odd to be away from the comrades Eren had been making, but not unfamiliar. More tense by far since it was his first mission with Levi since getting the corporal's team killed – and he was again being told to trust Levi's judgment.

Nobody knew the plan for their breakaway group, only that it had been approved by Erwin. An undercurrent of fear and excitement, different from the normal thrill of encountering Titans, ran through the group. Eren saluted.

"Today we're going into the woods," Levi said flatly.

Eren nodded even as questions rose in his throat. He had a set list of questions he ran through in his head when told things like this. _Are we going to encounter Titans – _maybe. _Are we going to kill Titans – _yes_._ _What am I going to do _– the thing I'll least regret.

It usually worked, when he paid attention to it. Problem was, he wasn't always aware what the thing he would least regret was until after he had done it. The thirty-something year old corporal was proof of that.

While getting into formation, he found himself traveling alongside Mikasa, which was fairly rare. She always contrived to be next to him, but it rarely happened by _actual assignment_.

"Any rumor where we're heading?" Eren asked. She shrugged and looked like she knew no more than he did. To tell the truth, it was more worrying to have her near than it was to have her far away. It meant the corporal thought there was a chance they would run into serious trouble and it was _better_ to have his homicidal adopted sister around.

#

"The woods again," Armin murmured to himself. It was his plan, based on an old legend he had heard years ago, and it _still _ sounded stupid coming out of Levi's mouth in the war planning room, stupider getting explained in detail by Armin himself. It had been the first time Armin had participated in the planning of a scouting mission that took place outside the walls and wasn't a Rescue Eren maneuver. Depending on how all this went, it might be the last time he was able to contribute to humanity.

He looked up to see Levi looking back at him.

"T-there's no way this could—" Armin began to say and the corporal returned to looking without emotion at the horizon straight ahead.

"Don't jinx it before it's even begun, kid."

"But it's—but it's something I read in a book!"

"Yes. And that book survived the Titans." Levi looked back over his shoulder and Armin couldn't meet his gaze, eyes darting down to the reins. It did mean something didn't it, that the book had survived the Titans. Someone had wanted to keep it safe very much and had done so.

Who would do that for things that weren't true?

They had reached the gigantic trees without encountering any Titans. Every time Armin saw the trees, he remembered why tourists wanted to come to places like this. Just seeing the trees wasn't enough, you wanted to wrap _words _around them to try and contain what you were seeing. The trees were natural pillars against the sky, taller than Titans and sturdier too. Trees thick enough that travelling around them required passing entirely out of sight for several seconds.

"Heichou—" Armin began.

"We're heading in," Levi told the man on his other side, an experienced recruit named Gowan. "Keep cover on the entrance to the forest. If there are any major threats, let us know. We'll have someone high enough to see them."

Gowan immediately dropped back to report this as Levi, Armin, and two recruits named Dange and Ruther, both male, moved into the towering forest.

"You'll be doing the talking, kid," Levi told him casually, when they had been travelling about half an hour. _That assumes we find him_, Armin thought to himself but he simply nodded instead of commenting. Since Levi hadn't been looking at him, the corporal looked back at him irritably.

"You have an opinion about that?"

"No, Levi-_heichou_!" Armin back-pedaled furiously. "I just—no, I-I'm good with talking."

_I have to be._

They rode on. Dange and Ruther were quiet types who played scout for their comrades for several hours, until Levi and Armin took to scout positions. It was calming to flit about the trees, knowing that few Titans (if any) would venture into the forests. Things were going well, though Armin couldn't say if they were near or far from the man. The book had spoken, very resolutely, as if the country in question had existed. There was a map and a town (or where used to be a town) and that the man lived in a hut at the edge of a channel of water. It must have existed.

After Eren's transformation into a Titan and the revelations made about Titans since then, Armin would believe a lot of things. One of them was that this man existed and could help humanity. That he _would_ help humanity.

Provided he was still alive.

"Kid. Are we near?" Levi asked and Armin looked up, startled. He hadn't even heard the sound of the older man's 3D gear.

"I-I think so. I'm going to go down and check on the ground."

Levi remained above as Armin went down, which was probably better for defense. The trees were so thick that a Titan over three meters would have trouble moving in them. An armed fighter, coming from above, would be more effective than an armed fighter on the ground. And anything under three meters Armin should be able to handle on his own.

It would be the _only_ thing.

_I'm guessing. I'm guessing, I'm completely and totally guessing now! _The blonde thought in a tightly constrained panic. _Do I tell him? Do I tell him I don't even have my bearings, much least an idea of where we are?_

The book hadn't been specific about how to find the man. The people had just… walked there and pounded on the door and found the man. Granted, _they_ had had a dead guy. Armin felt terror rise in his throat and suppressed it. They were not going to have any fatalities on this trip. Not on a trip _he'd _proposed.

Finding nothing, he fired his gear and joined Levi roughly forty feet above the forest floor.

"Well?" Levi said.

"We should go back to Dange and Ruther, Levi-_heichou_."

Levi looked over at him coldly. "That wasn't an answer to my question."

_Panic!_ Armin's brain screamed, and he didn't.

"This isn't the place."

"Can you get us to the place?"

"I can," Armin said, with confidence he didn't feel. "It's near a channel of water."

"Oh is that all." There was sarcasm in Levi's voice and he pushed off towards the camp.

"It is there, sir!"

"You read it in a book and now you want a channel of water nowhere near here. Why did you think it would be here?"

Armin struggled to keep up. Levi's irritation was showing in his speed and, when the corporal drew far enough away, Armin raised his voice and shouted.

"Because it was on the map. Or-or past here! There wasn't a point of reference for distance, but this is where it matched!"

Levi didn't respond. His pace had slowed though and that was a mercy to Armin. They reached Dange and Ruther, who had been following them with the horses. Levi turned the entire troop around simply in heading back the way they had come, dropping after a few minutes to retake his mount.

"No luck?" Ruther murmured as Armin landed and mounted. The blonde shook his head.

"I _know_ it's this way. I just couldn't find it yet."

The look Ruther shot him was cunning. "You want more time?"

Armin looked at the other boy in surprise. Ruther had been in the company maybe six months and didn't do much to call attention to himself. He was a tall, gangly boy, with freckles and a sharp look about the eyes, as if beneath the ginger brush of hair, he was planning something. Despite his height, he was probably younger than Armin. The taller boy led his horse closer to the distance of a comfortable conversation.

"Why do you ask," Armin said carefully, making sure they were still trailing Levi and Dange at a safe pace.

"Dange has never been here before and really wants to climb one of those trees to the _top_."

"That's really dangerous! The branches get thinner, and—"

"Yeah, but he wants to. And, if he does, it's gonna take Levi-_heichou_ at least half an hour to get him down. He's the best, but after whatever happened with Eren, he's slower about getting people. Maybe it's his age."

"Even if he got up there, it's harder to use maneuver gear with thin branches. Every second spent chasing him endangers the group outside of the woods, who are _risking Titans_ so we can be here."

"Yeah." Ruther fixed a challenging stare on Armin. "For nothing, unless _you_ find what we came for."

There it was. The statement that he was outright useless and even if Dange didn't do this tree-climbing stunt, everyone had risked their lives on Armin's bad idea.

"E-even so—!"

"Even so." Without warning, Ruther reached over and shoved Armin – hard – and the blonde fell off the horse. Scout horses didn't bolt but Armin scrambled back anyway, becoming tangled in his cloak.

"What's going on?" Levi called back.

"Arlert fell off his horse!" Ruther called. "We're fine!" Then he winked at Armin and readied his maneuver gear, looking at the trees above. The gear fired.

"I lied! I want to go up there!" Ruther said, mounting the surrounding trees with great speed. He was sixty feet and out of reach before Armin could even get to his feet. Ahead, he could hear Levi cursing, riding back with Dange.

He could stay and hang out with Dange, waiting for Levi to bring Ruther down and thrash discipline into him. Or…

Armin moved further back into the undergrowth, crawling backwards on his hands. He had skinned them in the fall but not badly. When Levi and Dange arrived, his absence was noted, but Levi took to the trees instead, as Ruther had thought he would. Armin continued into the undergrowth, keeping as quiet as possible.

He had maybe an hour on his own. It was well known that the corporal administered his own corporal punishment, in the absence _or _presence of Erwin. Ruther probably understood that he was going to take some damage from this stunt. But Levi had been temperate the past few months – or rather the company had been temperate. Ruther probably hadn't _seen_ Levi annoyed.

But Armin still remembered Eren's introduction to the corporal vividly. He had done the math and was fairly sure Levi could break his ribs with one swift kick. So. Use this time _wisely_. If worst came to worst, he could console himself in knowing that he never could have stopped Ruther anyway.

###

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in SNK. I'm not even going to pretend I'm not a very very very new fan. But I'm writing this for fun so... if there are errors (which there probably are) I am sorry, you're probably right, and I am just really lazy about fact-checking for a series so intent on driving me mad.

Also Ruther and Dange don't exist in Titanverse! So, don't bother worrying about them, they'll probably get eaten in the next few chapters in the way of all things Titan.


	2. Chapter 2

Thank you for the support! Brief chapter, but I actually finished the fanfiction in a 4-hour spree on Sunday. :) Updates as I have time to get it typed up. I do hope it amuses. Please don't be distracted by the surprising nature of the crossover, I promise there is a more-or-less serious plot. (And Levi. Yes, I'm promising Levi.) (There will also be a full disclaimer at the end for anything I make allusions to.) (If I remember.)

#

"_Armin_?"

Eren could see his friend flinch in surprise and wished for half a second that he could have telegraphed his presence a little better. Then he got over it.

"What the heck are you _doing_?" he said, dropping to the meadow himself and looking around for the entourage (i.e. bodyguards, to his mind) that Armin should have. "Where are the others?"

"Levi-_heichou_ is dealing with some insubordination," Armin said evasively.

Eren was Titan-obsessed but he wasn't completely dumb.

"Like you running off to find… wherever we are?" the black-haired youth said. Armin bit his lip and tried to change the subject.

"Why are _you_ here?"

"Because it's on the perimeter!" Eren snapped, though he hadn't exactly been told to come this far either. Armin smiled at his tone.

"You're insubordinating too."

"That's not a word, Armin, and you should _both_ get back to your groups. Gowan already told me to come find you, Eren. Levi-_heichou_ is going to have a fit, Armin." Mikasa dropped out of the tree above like a falcon in the dive.

"I'm doing what we came to do," Armin said firmly. "There's a man I have to talk to."

"Well, it doesn't look like anyone has lived here in a long time," Mikasa said. They surveyed the land together. The clearing was speckled with bits of ancient town that the wilderness was gradually reclaiming, with the adamant advance of time and dandelions. It was flat and exposed all the way to the channel with no Titans on the horizon. So far as they all knew, Titans didn't swim. It was something Hanji hadn't been able to test yet but probably would, when she could.

_I have to find him_, Armin reminded himself, and as he thought it he half-remembered something the book had said.

"They follow a sword…"

"What, Armin?" Eren asked.

"Oh, it's nothing. I was just thinking about the thing I need to find." He couldn't tell them point blank that there had been a magic sword in the book, not unless he wanted to be treated like Eren on his particularly vehement killing-Titans days – all kid gloves and soothing words. - but then again, Armin wasn't Eren. Couldn't become a Titan at the chomp of a hand. Someone would probably just tell him flat out he was crazy.

He had gotten Levi to undertake this mission by saying his grandfather had given him a book of history that talked about a miracle worker who lived in this area. Armin wasn't at all sure that what he had was a book of history anymore. He _was_ pretty sure that he didn't have a magic sword.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash. Smoke? _Not steam, not steam, not Titans, not now_—no, it was actually smoke from a chimney. Shoving past Eren, Armin hurried into the meadow, into the ruined town and towards the ascending wisp of grey. It was attached to a hut, which was much smaller than any of the houses in their town had been. Despite its size, Armin knew he had been able to see it before. He knew there had been no smoke from the chimney and the hut had given no sign of being lived in. The whole area had been a graveyard for buildings; it felt lived in now.

Before anyone could stop him, he ran up and banged on the wooden door.

His friends didn't yell at him to stop, still he heard Mikasa become battle ready with the requisite clank of blades. Eren moved after him, body tight as a wire.

"What if it's a Titan?" Eren asked.

"You think a Titan would live in this dump?" A horizontal slot in the door slid open abruptly, revealing a pair of suspicious wizened eyes that squinted out at them. "What'dya want?"

"A miracle!" Armin said, almost stuttering on his relief. "You can do miracles. Right?"

A dismissive grunt. "I'm retired, kid."

The eyes drew back, the slot began to slam shut, and Mikasa moved faster than any of them could anticipate and stabbed her blade into the gap. There was a strangled sound of frustration. Not pain though.

_Thank God._ Armin started breathing again.

"Mi-Mikasa, you could have killed him—"

The slot was opened.

"I don't do miracles anymore!"

"I-It's for humanity," Armin managed as Mikasa withdrew her blade and replaced it, daintily, in its holster. Sometimes, he wondered if there was a border in her head between killing Titans and seriously threatening to kill anybody who wasn't Eren. She could have maimed the man. Blinded. And that was probably why Levi hadn't asked them along into the woods on the secret mission.

"Pssh, humanity. Only thing good about that is true love and I don't see any of you portin' around _that_!" the man said caustically, still not having opened the door.

"I would kill you for Eren," Mikasa said flatly. The pair of eyes looked taken aback, then focused on Armin.

"Aren't _you_ the lucky guy?"

"Er, I'm not Eren," Armin said. Eren was, as usual, trying to pretend he was very, very far away from the embarrassing situation.

"Then no offense but get these two jokers away from my door and push off!"

"Don't the Titans threaten you?" Eren asked, putting a hand on the wall of the house and looking at its construction, then at the area around it. "Living like this?"

"None'a your business, take your girlfriend and go!"

"But we-!" Armin began to protest, when something caught Eren's attention. Armin knew what that sudden level of stillness meant. Eren's pupils had dilated, his breathing caught up in a gasp as he stared At something behind Armin, back towards the forest. Dreading the sight, Armin looked.

A black plume of smoke shot up from the forest. Mikasa saw it as well, though her only response was a tiny sigh. She faced the door of the hut, took a step back to steady herself, and cleanly cut the door off its hinges. The man let out a startled 'awk!' and scrambled out of the way of the door as it toppled inwards.

"Eren, get inside. Armin, go see what's wrong," Mikasa ordered.

"M-Mikasa, hang on!" Eren protested. "I don't even know what to ask him!"

At this statement, Mikasa looked judgmentally at Armin, as if he had orchestrated this entire problem just to make her have to choose between dragging Eren into certain danger or abandoning Eren in uncertain danger.

"Maybe it's nothing important, Mikasa," Armin said. "I am missing. That could be it."

It had been well over an hour since he left. Ruther would be keeping in line with Heichou's iron rule by now and they would be looking for him. Behind them, the white-haired man (who must have been in his seventies or older) was still staring down at his battered doorway.

"Y'crazy—"

"They could be injured," Eren told Mikasa. "We have to at least go and check."

"Send the crazy girl!" the white-haired man snapped, going for what he probably thought was the least of all possible evils. "You want a miracle, you gotta fix my door, but I'll hear you out at least. Just get her out of here."

#

Thank you for reading.


	3. Chapter 3

Thank you for the support!

#

Eren was sitting with the white-haired man. Armin was drinking some tea that the man had made for them. The white-haired man pulled an axe from beneath the table and chopped off Eren's head. It took several swings. Armin choked, paralyzed by the tea, then the white-haired man came after him.

Reset.

The white-haired man transformed into a Titan and bit both of the boys' heads off.

Reset.

The area became infested with Titans that had grown in the ground like carrots, defying all logic, burst out, and all three of the males were torn to pieces.

Reset.

By the time Mikasa reached the group in the forest, she could have screamed at them for wasting her time and practically getting Eren killed (well, or so she imagined). But Mikasa did not scream. Mikasa was an iceberg floating in an ocean of calm. So she landed next to the men and their horses noiselessly, letting her cloak settle over her gear like a consummate professional. Despite her silent entry, Levi seemed to sense her approach and utterly failed to look surprised when she approached. He was riding one horse and leading Ruther's. Ruther himself was jackknifed over the back of Dange's horse, making no noise nor movement.

"Can't wake him up," Levi said when he noticed her attention. Then: "Don't look at me like that, he _fell_. A branch broke. I haven't touched him other than moving him onto the horse– anyway, what are you doing here." When Levi asked things, they didn't sound like questions, except when he knew the answers and wanted to see if you knew it too.

"Armin found the man he was looking for," Mikasa said.

Levi made no response, just kept the horse moving forward. Mikasa kept pace at his side. From behind them, Dange groaned.

"Oh come on! Stop playing conversational chicken!" he said. Then, as Levi shot a look at him. "Sorry, _heichou_. Sir."

The corporal didn't even have to look mad. He didn't have to look _anything_ and still he could put the fear of God into strangers. To that tiny extent, Mikasa was jealous. But asking for information from her made Levi appear the supplicant and volunteering information suggested that Mikasa wanted to make him happy with her.

Levi said, "Where did the kid take them."

"The edge of the forest to the north. There's a ruined city. No Titans."

"Good." He held out the reins of Ruther's horse to her and pointed his horse north. "Take those two back to the bigger group and stay there until I get back."

Mikasa didn't move to take the reins.

"It was an order," Levi said evenly, hand still outstretched. She didn't move and his expression grew tight around the edges. "I am more than capable of protecting your childhood friend." He hesitated as the sentence died away, waiting for her to bite back a sharp rebuttal. When it didn't come, he looked up at the trees as if assessing their worth.

"Armin, though, I might have to kill him. I haven't had a bath in two days because of him."

"The man Armin found might be able to save Ruther," Mikasa said.

"I don't put a lot of stock in 'mights'," Levi said. She could tell by his tense stance that he wanted her to get going on what he had asked her to do. The reins dangled like an invitation. Eren was waiting for her though. She had to say something that would make Levi forget that he wanted her, Dange, and Ruther back with the bigger group, something to make him want what Armin had found.

"More stock than having to tell his family he died in the woods?" she said.

She got a glimpse of pain on the corporal's face. It was unlike any of the other scouts' expressions of pain. Armin telegraphed his pain like a train whistle but, equally like a train, rode on through it - damaged but not decreased in resolve.

Eren wore his pain like a flaring cape, something no one could miss seeing if they came in contact with him; he would use it to make entrances and exits and sometimes he would just wrap it around him and hide – which made it all the more noticeable as it was all anyone could see of him.

Mikasa didn't know how she wore her pain.

Levi's was like the sudden prominence of an expression that was _always_ there, lurking in his eyes and the set of his mouth, and then it faded until looking at him, you couldn't tell where the pain had been. If the grief had been stored in his eyes or the lines of his forehead. You were just certain that it was still there, still staring at you, and yet Levi looked like Levi and nothing else.

"It wouldn't be the first time someone died in the woods," he said. Reaching to his pack, he began readying a flare.

"Away from Titans, I mean," Mikasa said. Levi spun the chamber and fired – green, for a change in route.

"Lead on then. I hate telling people—" Levi began, then stopped himself and jogged the horse onward. Mikasa could finish the rest of the sentence on her own anyway.

_Hate telling people that their deaths achieved nothing. _

She took to the trees and they had a silent ride to the edge of the woods.

#

When they got to the hut where she had been imagining a slaughter for the past hour, the door was still down. Armin was vainly trying to tell the man that he could just _will_ the Titans away and that would be a miracle wouldn't it, and the man, who was trying to put the door back in place, said he only worked with dead people.

Levi slid off his horse and, with a casual gesture, pulled Ruther off of Dange's horse and headed for the door. The bigger boy dwarfed him, yet Levi appeared not to notice.

"Then we need a miracle," he told the miracle man.

"What, him?" the white-haired man looked at Ruther, slung over Levi's shoulder. As the scout went by, he lifted and dropped the scout's wrist. "He's not even dead yet!"

"I could kill him, if that's easier," Levi said.

The white-haired man looked at the captain, striding into his hut, and Mikasa could feel a change in the tempo. The man was serious now, angry. Dange had dismounted and was jogging inside to clear the table for Levi, probably trying to even the score from the 'conversational chicken' comment hours before. The miracle man followed them inside, eyes narrowed.

"Then you're not the kind of guy I do miracles for," the miracle man said.

"It was a joke," Levi said. Silence.

"Maybe you should make your jokes in a more joking tone of voice," Dange said, still not having figured out that opening his mouth was a bad idea. An awkward silence had set up shop between the white-haired miracle man and Levi. Armin stepped into the fray as Levi slung Ruther onto the newly-cleared table.

"R-Ruther climbed one of the trees to give me time to find you," he told the miracle-man. Mikasa felt the killing aura around Levi shoot up like a thermometer in a Titan's mouth, then cool.

"And you were successful, which is the only thing that makes that fine, kid," Levi said, then turned to the miracle man. "Fix him, and we'll be on our way."

"I don't remember setting up a charity for half-dead tree climbers!" the miracle man snapped. "And don't touch that!"

Eren had wandered over to a four-colored dial on the wall near the right side of the door and was about to turn it. Currently, the red shape was at the top, but there were black, blue, and green in alternating shapes around the dial. There was also a little black cord that ran to the doorframe which seemed to serve no purpose now that the door was down. Perhaps it was some kind of special bell? The black-haired teen looked up in surprise at being caught.

"What does it—" Eren began to ask.

"None of your business!"

Levi ignored this conversation altogether and addressed Armin.

"Your show, kid. You have ten minutes."

#

Ten minutes, Armin thought. That would be a reference to how long it would take the rest of the group to skirt the perimeter of the forest and catch up with them. Ten minutes to be _really really persuasive_. Armin steadied his nerves and took a breath. The white-haired miracle man looked sharply at him at this noise and leaned back on his heels, folding his arms in a skeptical posture.

"Sir, we are defending humanity against the Titans. Ruther is an integral part of that design," Armin said. "It-it is the highest of causes, at the risk of our lives."

"You got money?"

"Er." Armin tried not to look expectantly at Levi, who as the oldest in their company and the leader, would probably be the only one with money. It wasn't like the Scouting Legion doled out wages on the road. Even back at the outpost, there probably wasn't a lot of cash. They would have to return to a major town first…

"How much?" Levi asked, his tone resigned to being the traveling wallet.

"How much you got?" the miracle man asked back, tone wily.

"A man is going to die on the table while you argue about price!" Armin said. He knew people and money and this type of discussion could go on for a long time. "And that's no good for anyone."

Levi said nothing. He had retreated to the doorway after dropping Ruther off on the table and was now staring at something in the distance with enough intensity that it seemed he was _there_, not here. Everything here was bickering and inconsequential. Then—

"Fix Ruther. You'll have whatever your price is if he's up by the time I'm back. Ackerman, Jaeger, with me. Dange, get the door up. Armin, eight minutes." Levi fired his gear and launched into the trees, heading west towards their company and whatever he had seen on the horizon that worried him. Mikasa leaned out of the doorway after him and readied her gear.

"Titans," she said by way of explanation.

"Shouldn't the group—" Armin began, but she fixed him with a glare.

"You're not following orders, Armin," she said, gently admonishing him. She and Eren jetted off, leaving Dange to start trying, with plenty of grunts and heaving, to lift the door back into place. Armin turned to the white-haired miracle man.

_This is for Ruther's life, _he told himself._ If he's still alive anyway. This shouldn't be hard. _

"Can I—know your name, sir?" Armin asked.

"Max," the man replied.

"If we have Ruther functioning, we'll be better able to defend you from the Titans."

"He won't be able to move for at least fifteen minutes," the miracle man said shrewdly. "I've seen the Titans and you don't have that kind of time."

"The rest of our group will be here in less time than that," Armin said, praying that this would be the case. "They'll protect you."

Behind him, the door fell inwards with a bang. Though the noise made Armin jump, he didn't look until Dange yelped in surprise, fear- and then pain. For a terrible second, Armin _couldn't_ turn around. It couldn't—they couldn't be here! The group was fighting the Titans! They should be at least a mile off. They couldn't be here, not in such a ruined area.

Max was staring at whatever was happening in the doorway. His expression made Armin turn, readying his blades to defend an utterly indefensible area to the best of his ability. Ready, in other words, to die.

A Titan, bent, smiling, and grasping with its man-size fingers, was pulling Dange out the door and towards its waiting mouth.

Armin fumbled to get his blades into position and he was _slow, so slow!_ The Titan put its gaping maw up to the door as it maneuvered its massive wrist back towards its mouth. It had bashed out the left half of the door-frame on its way in but it was still angling for the hole, not tearing the walls and roof out. Dange was screaming for Armin, arms pinned by the Titan's fingers.

Armin had been eaten once before.

It wasn't an empathy one forgot, or could ever ignore afterwards.

Launching off the table, he slashed at the Titan's wrist with his blades. The spring carried him into the bookshelf on the far side of the room, where he gathered recoil from the crash and leapt again. Slashing—

The wrist was spouting blood, muscles losing their grip, but Dange wasn't free yet. Rebounding off the other side of the wall, Armin launched himself straight at the wrist in the doorway, slashing down as hard as he possibly could. The blade went through the wrist, caught on the floor, broke, and Armin's momentum was carrying him out the damaged door.

As he passed through the doorframe, curled tight in a ball as if to push himself away from the threat, he felt the air change. Sudden moistness.

_I'm already in its mouth._

There would be no Eren to save him. He crashed hard onto what he thought was its tongue (_swallowed alive?!)_ and felt it splatter around him like mud. Tongues didn't do that. The Titan shouldn't have even fed yet, if it was an Aberrant. Armin opened one eye. Then the other.

There was grass beneath him. A muddy meadow. Rain. Trembling, he turned and looked up behind him, expecting to see either the Titan in battle with a scout or the Titan inexplicably having stood up to eat him.

Nothing. There was nothing but a cloudy sky and some distant treetops. Look lower... a town, down the hill. Lights were on in window. He was still trembling. Rain fell on his head and he looked back at the hut.

Still there.

"Uh… uh… hunuh..?" he tried, panting. The rain was driving and getting in his eyes.

"Welcome to Wales!" Max called from the open doorway.

"I-I… uh?" Armin tried for words again, shakily getting to his feet in the slick mud. "W-where's the Titan?"

Miracles. The man was in the business of _miracles_.

"Part of it is still in here," Max said. "Get back inside before you catch your death."

"Max!" There was a shrill female voice from inside the hut now. Armin stared in new bafflement and said "er?" on the grounds that maybe Max would explain things. Instead, the female voice cut in and Max went inside.

"Max, you _said_ you would tell me whenever we moved, you great blinkin'—**_why is there a corpse in my kitchen_**?"

"Be quiet, witch!"

"You been mucking about with that wizard's stuff again, don't go calling _me_ a witch!"

-and Armin, utterly lost, went back into the dry and noisy house. It felt like entering a dream. He still didn't know what they were doing in a whale. Did the inside of whales look like a small town? Did it rain in whales? He decided to try this last on the woman who Max called 'Val' when he wasn't calling her 'witch.'

"Does it rain in whales?" Armin asked her.

The white-haired elderly woman, who looked as if she had spent years with Max and took all intimacies as her due. She was currently bending over Ruther with an inquisitive eye.

"Yes, it rains all the time. Now, who broke my bookshelf?" she asked, glancing up at Armin. "It certainly wasn't your friend. Max, what do we have for a coma?"

"There-there was a Titan—ma'am," he said brokenly. Would it be out of place to mention that he had just saved their lives, which meant they should save Ruther's? Max was already thinking along those lines.

"We'll fix 'im," Max said grudgingly. "Val, check the cabinet for that magic elixir you got in the market, we'll coat it with St. Johns and dewdrops."

"Hershey's sweet?"

"To cover THAT taste? Yeeesh, gimme some Ghiradelli."

"Humanity thanks you, sir," Armin said with a polite salute. He wanted to ask what Max had done to make the Titan vanish. The miracle man was leaning over Ruther with 'Val' now though – hardly open to questions. Dange was in the corner furthest from the door, breathing heavily as he tried to calm down from an even closer near-death experience than Armin. Armin approached him.

"Dange—"

"I'm fine. Thanks- thanks to you." The boy didn't move, legs pulled into his chest as he tried to work through his emotions. If Armin remembered his own experiences correctly, Dange probably just wanted to scream and scream and scream until his eardrums burst and then the world would just pass by in a nice, quiet glide of concerned people, deep in the kingdom away from the Titans.

Armin took a seat next to him on the ground. He wasn't sure why Dange had ignored the chairs around the table, but he had a pretty good idea it had something to do with being much more defensible in a corner, on the ground.

"If not for whatever Max did, I would be dead too. Did you see what happened?"

Dange looked at the still-open doorway, where rain poured over the soggy open field. Very slowly, he nodded.

"The dial."

There it was, intact on the right side of the door, with the black side pointing up now. Before, it had been red.

"When you were jumping for the door, he turned it and the doorway changed. Like a window or something. And you were out in the rain and the Titan was gone."

So whales was a place, not a thing. They had moved _places_. It explained how the house had been occupied one moment and hollow the next, back at the edge of the wood. Max and Val simply hadn't been living here when they first arrived. Maybe it was luck of the draw that they had come at all.

The corporal, Armin thought suddenly. The group!

If they were fighting Titans right now, they would need refueling soon. They would need to go home, which meant they needed to collect Armin, Dange, and Ruther or give them up for dead. Without gas, the trees would be impossible and on the ground, they would be sheep for the slaughter.

It was no good just thinking 'Levi will figure something out,' because that wasn't fair to Levi, who wouldn't expect them to teleport somewhere else. Armin sat back, thought about this, and fretted as the miracle man and his wife worked to save (or resurrect) Ruther.

#

This fic will go on for a while yet (though more will happen than just sitting in the hut). Hope you enjoy it, and kudos to any of you who've caught the references. I know some people are a bit out of character, apologies.


	4. Chapter 4

Thanks so much for reading! And reviewing, but more for the reading. :)

#

"This is the house," Levi said to the group as they milled around the entrance to the hut. It was the only house with a kicked in doorway. But the room through the doorway was dark, dirty, and empty.

"Maybe they just left?" Eren said without conviction. He was covered in Titan blood, as the battle had been an intensive one, and four Titans were now slowly decomposing in their wake. There was a fifth and final one-armed one that they had put down just outside the village. It didn't look as though it had fed on anyone. The group was tired and decreased by two. Several of them hadn't gotten off their horses and just sat, waiting to move or for something to try and kill them. It was how scouts lived.

As days in the Scouting Legion went, today hadn't been one of the worst, but it wasn't great. At this point Levi was waiting for their luck to take a nosedive. Hide and seek would only exhaust them further.

"This isn't 'just left' dirt," Levi told Eren. "It's filth. The Titan couldn't have done this."

"So—"

"So, if they found someone who can move buildings and all the people in them, it's worth waiting for." Levi took stock of the sky, which was in the process of turning a nearly-fluorescent pink/red and darkening. "We'll spend the night here."

"_Outside the outpost?"_ Eren said before he could stop himself.

"Titans won't stir until dawn, and we have the trees. Gowan," Levi addressed the second and the man broke away from the group. "Get the team up in the trees and fed." At least they had rations. Without rations, it would have been a very long night indeed. Gowan obeyed, though Eren lingered, looking puzzled.

"I thought we didn't have enough gas to—"

"I don't remember asking for your opinion, Jaeger."

And the team dispersed like tadpoles around a ripple, getting up into the trees were there was a modicum of safety. Levi took up a position on the roof of the hut. It was thatch, which wasn't really _clean_ per se, but certain types of trees in the wood oozed a sap. He had discovered it one mission with Erwin and remembered that it took days for the stuff to wear off his hands. And even if it was only one kind of tree, he didn't yet know which kind, and it was easier on the whole to take position on the thatch roof, where you at least knew what you were dealing with.

And he was the corporal. He could do what he wanted.

He kept an eye on the slowly evaporating Titan on the far side of the village. Steam rose from its decomposing body until finally it got too dark to see. The sun went down. Levi began to feel the cold creep in. He had no intention of sleeping, but closed his eyes and waited and listened. Eventually, Armin would make the man bring the house back to where the house physically was.

That was how Armin worked. Even now, the blonde was probably in a panic about what the rest of the group would be doing or thinking about him and his damnable mission.

Around 4 a.m. by Levi's count, the hut returned to being a hut. The open doorway first ejected Ruther and Dange, the latter carrying the former, and then Armin. Beneath Levi, the hut went still and lifeless again. In the dark, Armin's voice carried like a night animal's call.

"We should take to the trees until morning. Levi-_heichou_ will be back in the morning to check."

One of the boys, probably Dange, snorted.

"He will!" Armin said defensively. "I'm sure of it."

"They left us, Arlert," Dange said moodily and Levi heard him shift the weight of the moaning Ruther. "They're not going to come back for Ruther because they probably think he's already dead. And if they were fighting Titans, it's not like we have a lot of resources."

"I'm not dead!" Ruther said weakly.

"Yeah, yeah." Dange shifted position again. "Just use that thing the miracle man gave you. He said it would get us home, right?"

"He said it was _limited_ and I'm not going to waste it on leaving here when the group could be coming back for us," Armin said. He was louder in his peevishness. That high, whiny tone would probably wake the others, Levi thought, but he was curious. "What's it going to look like if we show up at home and they're still out here? If they all get _killed_ or something?" The voice trailed off, ashamed. "Doesn't Levi-_heichou_ live by some kind of motto of… don't do anything you'll regret? Or something? Eren talked about it once…"

"Arlert, I'm tired, and I couldn't care less what our fearless shortstack thinks about anything. Give me the thing you got or I'll take it."

"Back off!"

Levi dropped off the roof. They both heard him – their voices dropped out of the air like stones, they went as silent as any scout should be able to but rarely did. Levi approached.

"You two idiots could wake Titans."

"_Heichou_!"

"You left your post," Levi said, addressing the spot of black space that should be where Armin was standing.

"I never left it! And-and he did fix Ruther."

Ruther gave another weak grunt from his slumped position against Dange's shoulder and muttered something about being sorry for falling out of the tree.

"Save it," Levi replied. This was a bad time to begin doling out second chances and Erwin would have an opinion on the insubordination. If he was lucky, Levi would get to carry it out. Ruther's idiocy had delayed them. Morning was coming and he had nine people in his care now.

No. Not nine. Seven. Two had been eaten. Knowing neither of the boys could see it, he passed a hand across his eyes and wondered how he had forgotten Tartan and Cameo's deaths already. Dying in service of Ruther's _not_ dying and Armin's bad idea. Hardly far, but it was what it was.

"Did you learn anything?" he asked Armin. The blonde ducked his head, visible as a little more than a shadow in the dark.

"I can't say for sure yet, sir."

"Then wake the others. We'll get back to the outpost before morning." The sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon, almost a nimbus on Armin's blonde hair. Levi wanted to ask about the house that was and wasn't and was again, but it wasn't the time.

#

Deadlines were being Armin's friend. Deadlines meant the corporal didn't have the time to kick the crap out of disappointing people and Armin was pretty sure he had been roundly disappointing.

They were on their way back through the forest at a fast clip. In the earlier battle, the Titans had ignored the horses and so everyone was able to ride out now, even Ruther, but they were travelling in clusters. To be more specific, one _tight_ cluster, with only a couple of people at the perimeter keeping track of whether or not they were about to be attacked by Titans.

This was wrong.

"Where is Tartan?" Armin asked Eren, who was travelling alongside him. "He was the scout on the way here, right?"

Eren said nothing for a moment. Then: "… I wasn't fast enough."

"…Cameo?" Armin had noticed her absence as well and worried about it.

"_She_ wasn't fast enough."

_And who's fault was that?_ Armin thought dryly to himself. _They wouldn't be here and they wouldn't be dead if it weren't for my little bad idea getting its day in the sun and for what?!_

Eren had drawn off into his own Titan-slaughtering mental world as soon as Armin had stopped speaking. Probably thinking about the deaths of Tartan and Cameo and everyone who had gone before. Probably blaming the Titans.

_When it should be me he's blaming. What was it all for? A trinket?_

But it wasn't a trinket. Inside his uniform's pocket rode a device that could move you from one place to another just by thinking about it. It was beyond anything they had, or had heard of. And once he had decided on a destination, it would take him there, from anywhere, for as long as he had it. The transporter was all Max could give him in the way of remuneration for killing the Titan. It was based on the dial's design, the miracle man had told him, and it was all Max had been able to reverse-engineer. It would take the person who was touching it, plus whoever and whatever they were touching, to the specified location.

At the time, Armin had balked. _"Can't it go anywhere else? We go all over the place, if it could—"_

_"I had to cure a wizard of a nasty congenital feather condition just to get that!" Max said, pointing irritably at the dial above the door. "Molting like you wouldn't believe and that only takes me to four. You take that and like it or I'll take it back."_

Valerie had been insistent about Armin's taking the device, though he never seriously intended to leave it behind. She had insisted on a lot of things; his taking the device, their eating before they left, their swearing to get a good night's sleep somewhere and not to storm any castles… they were good people, people his grandparents would have been good friends with in an odd sort of way.

But what they had given him wasn't related to Titans. It definitely wasn't worth the two lives they had spent in acquiring it. Following the long night with the miracle couple and a panicking Dange, Armin wanted a hole to climb into and several hours of sleep and self-loathing, but that didn't look likely.

After an hour and a half's ride, the group reached the far side of the forest and rode into the morning. Gowan had spent the last half ten minutes riding around assigning people positions in a (still tightly clustered) travelling formation and they broke into it smoothly at Levi's signal. With two less people, they were spread thinly but still divided up into pairs.

Levi, at the head of the column, urged his horse into a gallop and the rest of them followed suit without knowing why. Armin didn't think about it, too busy watching for Titans on the horizon line.

"It's funny," he said to his companion, a heavy-set girl named Marla. "We're not going back the same way."

Marla shrugged. Armin looked back down at his reins, then fixated on the space between his horse's ears, trying not to wonder. "It means that we have a high probability of running into Titans. Did the Titans that attacked you yesterday come from that direction?"

She shook her head. "One surprised us – I was already fighting when the others showed up."

Well, that solved nothing. It especially didn't solve the question of why they were heading _this_ way. Armin could see the map in his head – they would come to a deep canyon if they rode this way long enough. It would be three hours out of their route though and, while canyons were better for their 3D gear, they wouldn't be able to get the horses down the canyon wall for at least a couple more miles until they found a smooth enough incline.

Plus, canyons were a funnel for Titans. If they wandered in, they had serious trouble getting out again. A canyon would hide them from Titan eyes only at the risk of exposing them to Titans already trapped in the canyon's walls.

Yet Levi rode past every turning point until there was no doubt in Armin's mind that they were heading to the canyon.

_Why_? Something discussed with Erwin?

Did the corporal seriously think battling through an assortment of Titans for some affected safety of environment would be better than going home the normal way like normal people? They had already lost two people—almost three!

He tightened his grip on the reins, ready to ride over and ask Levi directly, but his back twinged with pain at the movement. His body wasn't through punishing him for the house battle the day before. Maybe he wouldn't antagonize it by fighting with the corporal right now.

Someone had spotted a Titan. They changed direction, still working their way towards the canyon.

"What do you think is going on?" Armin asked Marla, desperate to make some kind of conversation with somebody who wasn't Levi. Marla was bright, he had heard her talking animatedly to other recruits in the hall before, but she looked away. After a moment, she shrugged.

"I'm sure the corporal knows what he's doing," she said. Armin envied her. He envied anybody who could completely trust someone else with their life and not have to be outthinking them on a minute to minute basis, just to feel sane.

Another change in direction. More working their way towards the canyon.

"We're going to kill the horses," Armin said, mostly to himself. The hard ride certainly wouldn't prepare them for the breakneck fight for survival needed to get through the canyon.

"Hm?" Marla asked.

"…nothing," Armin said, quietly losing his mind with curiosity. The canyon was probably twelve miles off, if he was guessing correctly. Scout horses were built for endurance and speed, yes, they were still _galloping_, but no horse could gallop further than two or three miles.

The column slowed a couple of minutes later, much to Armin's relief. They had covered two miles in a worryingly short time. If they didn't run again anytime soon, it should be okay. Armin tried not to wonder why they had run at all. Maybe to avoid Titans, maybe to avoid a muddy section of the road that would have made them filthy. Who knew. Stop thinking about it.

Just keep riding.

#

Sorry for the slowness (though I am sure the group appreciates not being attacked for Titans for at least a couple of minutes), things will pick up next chapter! Thank you for continuing to read!


	5. Chapter 5

Somebody please tell me if I use "corporeal" instead of "corporal". I realize it's hilarious, but it might, y'know, distract from the story and since I keep typing it, it might help to have outside help. :)

[An inability to spell corporal is not why I keep using _heichou_] [I just like how it sounds] [Levi-_heichou_] [now that I've done all this, I'm probably using it wrong too. xD Heichou-Levi? Levi-heichou?]

Also… I have no idea what foot size Eren has as a Titan. I couldn't find his height as a Titan either. Bah.

Anyway, story! :D

#

After another hour alternating between trot and canter, the column stopped. Ahead of them yawned the canyon, perhaps seven meters (twenty-three feet) across and twenty meters (sixty-five feet) deep, if Armin remembered correctly. He breathed a sigh of relief as the horses were allowed to stop and graze and the scouts dismounted. They were exposed, but anyone who looked around would see a Titan a mile off on their flat, clear surroundings. The weather was with them, sunny and warm for this early in the spring and clear skies meant everyone felt safer.

Stopping after a hard ride was akin to a free-for-all break. Most of the scouts were eating, talking, and checking their gear, though Gowan had been assigned to officially watch for Titans. Levi was one of the first to dismount (leading to the break).

"Looks like Ruther's got some food," Marla said, sliding off her horse and handing off the reins to Armin, who was still mounted. "You aren't going to take a break?"

"Go ahead, I'll be a minute," Armin said, thought he could feel hunger gnawing at his stomach. The atmosphere around the Scouting Legion was tense. They were laughing and joking now as Ruther tried to keep back some of the snack (high quality chocolate that the miracle couple had given him); all the tenseness was nonverbal. Some hung back by their horses. Many were almost compulsively checking their gear.

_Well_, Armin thought resignedly as he dismounted. _It could just be the noise_.

Beneath the scouts' conversation, there was a hushed sound of great things moving at the bottom of the canyon. None of the Titans were tall enough to climb out of the canyon and were, when you stood anywhere but at the edge of the wall, altogether invisible. If not for the sound of movement, the scouts wouldn't know the Titans were there at all. They got a bit louder as the break went on, getting comfortable. Armin remained outside the group, listening to the chatter and to the Titans moving far below.

"How do you make this stuff?" Marla was asking Ruther, who shrugged.

"I dunno, you're a girl. How _do_ you make this stuff?" he retorted.

"You're an idiot. Just because I'm a girl doesn't mean-"

And it was a long, tangential argument. The corporal headed over to the edge of the canyon to assess their situation. Armin kept an eye on him because, in general, what leadership was doing was always more interesting than his comrades. Bar Eren and Mikasa, but they had been dragged into the 'chocolate-as-women's-work' argument. Mikasa apparently knew what went into it, but Eren remembered how to prepare it properly.

The canyon walls were sheer here. It wasn't a place they could lead the horses down and it wasn't a place Titans would climb out of due to their own volition. So the arm that came up out of the canyon was utterly outside the realm of expectation. It was nothing more than grasping fingers, at the very end of its reach, not even enough to haul itself out – but still it could trip Levi, pulling him forwards into the canyon.

No one was close enough to stop it. It was very quiet anyway. Gowan would see it in a second. Several of the scouts were facing the canyon, they would realize it and point so everyone could collectively panic. Armin remembered the second of not turning around when the Titan had grabbed Dange. He refused to relive that second.

_It's pointless to throw yourself into the canyon, he's going to die and there are at least fifteen Titans down there, you know that, and you've killed maybe nine in your entire life and that was when you had HELP and what are you doing?! _

_- _ because he was already vaulting off the cliff edge towards the Titans below.

Levi had, in keeping with his reputation, somehow managed to cut the Titan's hand open at the palm by scissoring his blades and pulling the appendage apart in a spray of blood. This left Levi with no hands with which to control the 3D gear when the Titan dropped him. Levi went into a spinny, bladey ball of angry humanity. Nothing could get a grip on him during his descent. Armin didn't see him land. He imagined that the corporal left a verifiable crater when he hit the ground.

_No deaths,_ Armin thought as he fought his way down, ducking the grasping hands and snapping mouths of jumping Titans. _No deaths, no deaths, no deaths._ _There have already been two deaths, what are you, Krista? Stop trying to get yourself killed!_

The first order of business, he thought, was to dismantle the huge Titan, looming like a solo tree over a meadow of smaller Titans. Imitating something he had once seen Levi do, Armin ran up the thing's outstretched arm, towards its open, elderly face (_A bit like my grandfather_), and sliced out the back of its neck with little more than a pang of guilt. It toppled backwards and squashed several of the smaller Titans beneath it on its way down.

_Oh my God_, Armin thought with sudden horror. He leapt to perch on the canyon wall and stared at the scene below. _What if he fell on Levi? What if I just killed the corporal?!_

Plummeting, he entered the Bad Part of the fight, the region where 'littler' Titans could reach and grab at him. It would only be worse once he got on the ground. The Titans would stop looking up and there would be no getting past them without entering again into the realm of hands and gently smiling faces. So thinking, he threw himself towards the ground. Suicidal speed would confuse them.

Something swatted him into the canyon wall.

Swatted. It was a term that shouldn't apply to humans. Flies, moths, non-human things.

Armin remembered, even as he flew backwards into the canyon wall, that he should brace himself and redirect the energy into a new, southernly diagonal. He didn't. The wall met him like a friend driving a speeding cart and now _Armin_ was the one leaving a crater.

His head. His vision. The battle. HE became one with the wall, couldn't imagine leaving it, even as he slid/fell the remaining fifteen feet to the canyon floor. Somewhere high above, he heard Eren's Titan roar.

_Ooh, swimmy,_ some part of his consciousness giggled. _Eren's coming to save the day! _

This was followed closely by: _Yes, because Eren's so delicate when he's fighting, there's no way he'll stomp on us by accident in an incredibly narrow battleground._

Then: _Can you move?_

_Mmm, probably._ He flexed the fingers of one hand. While it took more effort than it usually did, they moved. So he could move. That was nice.

_Can you move?_

Armin wondered if he should be repeating things when he was talking to himself in his head. That didn't sound right.

"ARLERT. CAN YOU MOVE."

This was the canyon. There were Titans. There was no time for 'are you okays' or grand defensive gestures. He was down here, the corporal was alive, and Armin was being a burden rather than a help. Armin vaulted up into the Bad Part again without thinking about it. Helping. Helping. Helping!

Wait.

He had killed two Titans (which made three total), before he wondered if the corporal was even incapacitated. Maybe they could simply use the maneuver gear to climb out of here, instead of battling Titans. Armin half-turned to look back at Levi, thinking that he really should have done this before throwing himself into the fray. He couldn't see the corporal, so he started a descent back towards where Levi had been.

A hand swatted him down again.

This time Levi got him before he hit the ground. The corporal moved them both smoothly to one of the far walls and perched there, though the perching was more unsteady than the use of his gear. For that second, they were out of the way of the Titans.

"You have any idea how useless concussed people are to me?" Levi asked.

"Nnn?" Armin tried.

Levi swore. "Do you have enough gas to get out of here?"

Armin nodded. Being carried one-handed under Levi's arm, he had a pretty good view of the corporal's leg. It looked wrong. No. The stance looked wrong. Finally, he narrowed it down to the ankle looking wrong, and that made sense. Once something was injured once, it was easier to reinjure. Every old man telling you about how many times his knee/back/wrist/etc. had given out thanks to some old war wound was proof of that.

"Your—" Armin began. Levi dropped him, causing Armin to scramble to gain his footing on the wall.

"Good. Climb out of here," Levi said when Armin had stabilized.

"I'll follow—"

"Not enough gas."

"Then take—"

"I can't carry you up right now."

Armin got the feeling Levi secretly _liked_ dealing with concussed people. It was easier to predict what they would say. But you didn't drop concussed people and expect them to recover like Levi just had. Armin looked over his shoulder at the cluster of Titans. A shadow had fallen over them and they were looking up, open-mouthed, at its source: a lanky Titan that dwarfed them by three meters at least, huge jaw open and bellowing for vengeance. Eren crashed onto the canyon floor and was curb-stomping the smaller Titans in seconds. The air was getting thick with steam from the decomposing huge Titan Armin had killed earlier. Soon, the Titans wouldn't be able to see for the steam of their own corpses.

"It's getting cloudy- we could run down the canyon!" Armin called to the corporal. Levi looked at him and, in a moment of weakness, actually looked exasperated. Armin realized half a second later why.

_Yes, run with a busted ankle. Why not suggest sprouting wings, Armin?_

Wings. Curing nasty congenital feather conditions. The transporter.

"Heichou!" Armin said, turning to tell Levi they were saved. No response. The corporal had launched into the battle, blades drawn. Armin stared, then realized the practicality of the action. If he was dead, Armin would have no choice but to head up and out. The steam would give Levi a decided edge until his gas ran out. There was no use counting on Eren – in the narrow dark of the canyon, the large Titan could barely move to fight, much less recognize them or reach down safely to pick anyone up.

Armin pushed off the wall, a blade in one hand and the transporter held in his mouth. He needed at least one hand free. The transporter was easy to use, according to the couple. You just decided on a destination and then hit the center button. Somehow, this released some stored up 'magical energy.' You just had to be touching the transporter, everything you wanted to take with you, and nothing you didn't.

That last would be tricky.

So would the second, come to think of it. Levi was short, but he was stronger than Armin. Some of that had to translate into weight. Armin might not be able to pull the older man off his course, once decided upon. Working his way around snatching hands, Armin made his way through the steam towards Levi, who was defending a position along the wall where many of the Titans Eren kneed in the head were being flung. It was about thirty feet up and easily the most treacherous place in the canyon right now.

The corporal spotted Armin coming. His resulting expression could have made thunderstorms think about a change in career.

"I told you-!" Levi shouted, leaping towards him. In the middle of the jump, the gear failed.

A flicker of panic as gravity asserted itself.

Embarrassment, or a glimpse of something that looked like it. Acceptance that this was how things ended.

Then falling.

Armin recognized his chance. He shot forward and grabbed Levi under the arm (nearly impaling himself on a still-drawn blade in the process) and used the downward momentum to balance Levi's weight. It worked. They were falling together, not touching anything. Armin lodged his blade's hilt hurriedly in the crook of his arm, took the transporter out of his mouth, and – a Titan hand came at them from above.

Moving by instinct, Levi pushed off from Armin and stabbed upwards with both of his blades, puncturing the hand at the palm, then scissored the weapons outwards. A brief shower of blood and the hand fell apart.

Now they were in separate freefall. Armin had felt something break in the gear when Levi kicked off him to attack. It wasn't worth the time it would take to check it and find out it was broken.

Instead, he lashed out at the nearest Titan who swatted at him, like Levi, as a matter of instinct rather than intent. The trajectory was perfect. Armin crashed into Levi at speed, hit the transporter button, and they flew across a wooden room and slammed into the far wall. Regrettably, it was made of thick wood and did not break, so both of them laid on the floor a while.

The transporter transitioned people from war to peace with incredible speed. It was hard to process and it was the second time in twenty-four hours that Armin had had to do so. The corporal's eyes were open, though he hadn't pushed himself up yet, and seemed to be assessing what he could see from his current vantage point (i.e. the floor).

"Where are we," Levi asked.

"The outpost," Armin replied. His shoulder hurt. He had been leading with it when he was introduced to the wall, so it kept sending him little missives of pain, like notes from shoulder hell.

"It was the thing I got from the miracle man," he continued meekly. "I thought it was the best for humanity, sir."

"What?"

"If you lived. I thought it was best for humanity if you lived." _And that's why I disobeyed orders, _he added mentally._ Again. _

"Where else does it go." Levi began to get up with what was apparently his usual method: tucking his feet beneath him then straightening. The moment he put weight on the weak ankle, he staggered.

"Sir—" Armin began.

"Answer the question." The corporal had gotten to his feet, using the wall as an aid.

"It can only go here. It only has, uh, 'magic' enough for one designated destination and this was… where we needed to be. I thought."

Levi was silent, mulling this over. Armin felt his head drifting towards a long vacation in the valley of sleep, where notes from his shoulder would come back as undeliverable mail.

"What are you doing here?_" _ asked Erwin's voice and there was surprise in it. You didn't often get surprise from Erwin.

Armin found that he was on his feet and saluting, though he didn't remember getting there or deciding to salute. His shoulder barked orders at him to put his (expletive expletive expletive) hand down.

Erwin continued ."I didn't know you were back."

"We're… not," Levi said, and Armin could hear him fighting around the logical quandaries of the statement. "Arlert has a device that got us out of the canyon, but deposited us here. It can't go back though. With a fresh horse, I –"

"Denied. How many of your team are out of gas?"

"Four," Levi said. "Five, counting me. We were going to skirt the canyon on the way back and lure any Titans that found us into it."

"Gowan?"

"Knows enough to come back here and carry out the plan."

Erwin nodded. Then, as if noticing him for the first time: "Arlert, stand down."

The moment his legs unlocked, his knees buckled, and he found himself kneeling. It was deeply embarrassing, though neither Levi or Erwin commented on the breach of protocol or Armin's following struggle to get upright again. They continued discussing what was to be done about the missing forces and things that had been happening since they parted ways.

Armin stood again and saluted.

"Levi-_heichou_!" he said, interrupting. To his shame, he felt a hot stinging at the corners of his eyes. He was afraid of this answer. He was afraid of this _question_.

"Arlert," Levi said guardedly.

"Have their sacrifices been useful to humanity?" Armin asked. It felt like he was speaking very loudly. He hoped he wasn't yelling. It was hard to think with the pain in his shoulder and volume control was connected to thinking. The two men surveyed him in silence.

"Yes, Arlert," Levi said.

Armin refused to collapse again and let the wave of relief – though that wasn't quite the right word – pass over him. He bowed his head in acknowledgement and used the moment to force all the tears back to where they had come from. When he looked up again, Levi looked about to say something. The corporal looked at Armin's face for a moment and dismissed the question.

"That weak body won't hold up for much longer without food and sleep."

"Yes, _heichou_."

"Go get them."

As he left the building, Armin clearly heard Erwin say firmly: "No, I was serious, you're not getting a horse. If I find you taking one, I'll break your other foot and take your gear. Gowan will get them back."

Silence.

#

With apologies for the length. And for a possibly out-of-character Erwin. I hope this is still moderately amusing.


	6. Chapter 6

Sorry for the hiccup. I ran into work.

#

Armin was almost certain he had made it to the kitchens, but when he woke up, there was dirt on his face and he was hungry. He was also in bed, his shoulder and most of his upper body bandaged up in what had probably been a training exercise for medical interns. He could hardly move_. _Clearly, someone who didn't get out of the way fast enough had been handed bandages and an unconscious Armin and told to 'fix him.'

Armin sat up to get a better look at the room and realized, flinching, that painkillers hadn't been part of the exercise. He felt terrible – the kind of terrible that only got better after sleep and lots of not-moving. The movement did let him glimpse Eren, who had fallen asleep in a chair next to the bed. As usual, the other boy looked fine, without cuts or bruises.

On the bedside table, Mikasa had thoughtfully left a note, which read: 'Everyone is fine. Hanji is testing your transporter for future use. Glad you're okay. –Mikasa.'

Good, he thought. So long as it was useful to someone.

Armin laid back again and examined the paneled wooden ceiling. Almost everybody getting back from a mission that went as badly as that one did. Did it constitute a miracle? Maybe it was the best that Max could do.

Levi wouldn't be asking him to lead them anywhere again, that was for sure. It was then that he noticed something stuck to the headboard of his bed. Using his good arm, he reached up and pulled it down. The handwriting was unfamiliar and poor.

'As soon as you are vertical, come to the strategy room. Thanks.'

He had to read it twice. The 'thanks' just didn't follow. It didn't make sense. Then he remembered. For a moment, when his gear, Levi had expected to die on the battlefield. And Armin, the one who couldn't excel or keep up or kill Titans with super abilities, had stopped it from becoming a reality for humanity's one-man brigade.

That was the miracle here.

He got up very slowly and carefully to avoid waking Eren and went to the strategy room.

###End###

Are there unanswered questions? Is anyone **_really_** curious about what Levi was going to say to Armin or whether or not Howl would show up to claim the transporter? Cause if not, I like this ending. It doesn't carry this little drabble any further away from the original series than it already is.

I'll issue the disclaimer in full now: I do NOT own Attack on Titan/Shingeki no Kyojin, the Princess Bride (from which Max and Val are derived), or Howl's Moving Castle (from which the dial and my imagined little transporter thing derive). Ruther, Dange, and Marla were made up for the purposes of SNK has a large cast. I didn't forget people, I just… couldn't write them…

Thank you so much for reading and reviewing! I hope it amused, and I do apologize for the delay.


End file.
